Hello there and warm welcome to MANOEUVRE.
After an exceptionally challenging year and much soul searching, I have chosen to launch MANOEUVRE on Medium so that it is an accessible, yet safe space for anyone dealing with the impact or aftermath of any form of abusive behaviour. We live in a deeply toxic moment in time and rather than vent at its mindless virulence, it seems to me, more worthwhile, to invest in the art of living a thriving life.
In my early thirties I was deeply privileged to meet a woman who had, as a child, been incarcerated in Terezín. Known as Theresienstadt under the Nazi occupation, the conversion of a former military fortress which comprised a of citadel and an adjacent walled garrison town of the then, Litoměřice District, in the Ústí nad Labem Region, of the Czech Republic, into a part work camp, part concentration became renowned for its rich cultural life, despite being ruthlessly used as used as a holding camp for prisoners being transferred to Auschwitz and Treblinka concentration camps. I watched the series World at War as a teenager and one burning question about the notion of being a survivor of atrocity, never left me:
“How did a “Holocaust Survivor” cope with everday life after the war, knowing what they knew of what was inhumanly possible, beneath the veneer of social civility, without losing their minds?”
Mrs Helga Hošková-Weissová held my hand and explained; “ We have no choice but to thrive at living, anything less means that they win: And that is not an option. We thrive to honour the dead and ourselves, who lived.”
What I learned that day, is what brings me here: Regardless of the the nature of abuse, we owe it to all that we believe died in us too, to honour what lives on in us, by nothing less, than thriving. Survivor is a label and labels do not make men or women of us; we choose who we are and how we live meaningfully.
And in order to do so, the first thing to undress of its shame, is the victim. It took a very long time for me to feel solid enough within my sense of self to embrace my inner victim with love and compassion, rather than reject her with shame and self-loathing. I am all the more beautiful for it: And so should you be too.
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